The Advisor
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I've been advised I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: Shortly after Battle Group Castle.
A fire team of four men, including one of the precious SAWs, silently slipped towards two companies of Mejia's troops, dug in for the night.
When Lahcen had examined the enemy earlier, he found them unbelievably sloppy. Their sentries were no more than twenty yards from the main body, and the whole groups showed terrible light and noise discipline.
Once in position, the four-man team opened fire, from no more than forty yards away, killing and wounding several dozen men in the first burst of fire.
The fire team leader screamed in English, "Run, my brothers. I am wounded and they are too strong for us."
A platoon of troops was sent after the fire team. No one apparently noticed that the Berber had shouted in English, a language that was very uncommon among the Berbers.
The pursuing platoon could hear the Berbers somewhere ahead of them, screaming in terror and calling upon God to save them. The platoon leader ordered his men to run as fast as they could. He died before he realized he'd led his men into an L shaped ambush that cut his platoon to pieces.
Lieutenant Lahcen ordered his men to cease fire. With the help of the Tarkai and his night vision goggles, they looted the dead soldiers of weapons, ammunition, body armor, radios, helmets, first aid kits and all manner of things the Berbers lacked.
Five enemy soldiers lived through the assault, all wounded. Three were so badly wounded that Lieutenant Lahcen knew they'd never make it to the Berber's rather crude field hospital in time. They were overdosed with morphine and died quietly. The other two were lightly wounded and made prisoners. They were happy to talk to Berber and Saint George intelligence.
Lieutenant Lahcen had the radio that the enemy platoon leader had carried. Someone was demanding the dead platoon leader give a status report. Lahcen thought about giving the enemy commander an update but decided to let the man worry.
It wasn't until dawn the next day that a company very cautiously moved through the forest and found their dead comrades. By that time, the Berber commandoes were far away.
General Mejia, as he now called himself, commanded his troops from a comfortable suite in Samland. His orders to his troops were mainly obscenity laced tirades demanding that they take over his new country as fast as possible.
The aircraft that Saint George had, even the older, modified civilian aircraft, had sufficiently capable electronic warfare suites to shut down communication within Mejia's army. However, the information sent back to Mejia by his troops was a gold mine of information as it was usually sent in clear or in simple, easily broken codes.
At long last, the lead battalion of Mejia's army captured their first Berber town. They were quite disappointed. The town of some 5,000 people was completely empty, not just of people but of food and any other supplies the invaders might have used. They did find a few booby traps and mines but lost only a few people to them.
The invaders settled in for the night, happy to be under cover.
Three hours after sunset, Saint George's lone modern patrol plane began orbiting some thirty miles from the lead battalion. All of a sudden, all the invader's radios were filled with howling static. They were unable to send or receive any communications.
Sergeant Bennett, his snipers and an artillery forward observer, set up about a mile from the enemy occupied town.
In seconds, shells from all sixteen of the Berbers' artillery pieces were landing in the town. Mejia's troops hadn't bothered to dig in and the town's buildings were not built to stand up to that kind of bombardment.
Bennett got on his radio.
"Sierra Alpha to all Sierras, remember your orders. Shoot officers, radio operators, crew served weapons crews and any swinging dick who looks like he's trying to do something useful. Send 'em."
In the chaos of the artillery bombardment, no one noticed that some people were being taken down by gunshots. Or if they did notice, they did nothing about it.
The artillery forward observer noticed a large, boxy truck with several antennas on it. Figuring this must be a command vehicle of some sort, he asked the artillery battalion commander to be able to use one of the Berbers' very rare and very valuable laser guided artillery shells on the vehicle. After a brief discussion, he got permission.
He focused the laser designator on the truck and called for a fire mission. He was rewarded with the sight of the truck, along with the battalion commander and his staff, being blown to bits. No one missed the commander's communications since no one could receive anything through the blizzard of static that covered all of their comm channels.
As the forward battalion of Mejia's army was being decimated by artillery, two Berber battalions were moving in. One approached from parallel to the one road and the other cut the road behind the trapped battalion.
Discipline in the enemy battalion had collapsed. Although there were some brutal firefights, the Berbers were able to overrun the leaderless and terrified battalion, taking many prisoners and seizing much equipment.
Oddly, shortly before dawn, radio communications with the battalion's command post were reestablished. A thoroughly terrified enemy officer told Mejia that the battalion had been attacked but was holding off the Berbers and inflicting heavy casualties on them. He told Mejia of an unknown path through the forest that their scouts had found that would lead Mejia's troops to the rear of the Berbers, crushing them between two forces. Once Mejia had ordered a battalion to advance on the path and wipe out the Berbers, communications were cut off again.
The enemy officer who'd made the broadcast was taken back to Saint George where he was given a new identity and lived out his life happily.
The attacking battalion found the path and encouraged by what seemed to be a continuing battle ahead of them, pushed on as fast as they could to crush their enemies and save their comrades. They came upon a swamp that according to their information should have been no more than a mile across and no more than three feet deep. When they had gone more than a mile, and the water was over six feet deep, they began suspecting something was wrong. Something was, and they suspected it too late.
The two Berber battalions that had ambushed the first battalion, now ambushed the second one. In addition to their own weapons, the Berbers now had machine guns, mortars and recoilless rifles taken from their enemies. Any of Mejia's troops who were wounded quickly drowned and the battle ended with most of Mejia's troops surrendering.
No one in Mejia's command had any real idea what had happened to the two battalions and in the absence of any orders from Mejia, the various commanders decided to remain in place. Even if the orders Mejia was bellowing at his subordinates had gotten through the interference provided by Saint George's electronic warfare, it would have done little good as all that Mejia was broadcasting was nearly incoherent obscenities.
Castle and Beckett were in the Berber division commander's headquarters. General Izem's name meant lion in Berber and Castle thought the name was apt.
"Sir," Said Sergeant Saava, "We have a flash priority message from Saint George. You or Captain Beckett will have to decode it because…"
He got no further because Kate had grabbed the message from his hand and was busy decoding it.
"Get General Izem. He'll want to see this."
"What is it?" Rick asked.
"Edo colony has agreed to sell Saint George some weapons and Saint George is giving them to the Berbers."
"We're getting weapons?" Izem said, crossing to where the three were sitting. "How many and what kind?"
Kate read from the list.
"Five hundred squad automatic weapons, two hundred medium machine guns, fifty heavy machine guns, one hundred and ten 60mm mortars, forty 81 mm mortars…."
Izem took the list from Kate.
"Not very generous. No artillery at all."
"Almost all of Edo colony's military is their space navy. They have a smaller ground force than you do, although it's more heavily armed." Rick said. "And this is better than nothing."
"When will they arrive?" Izem asked.
"Aircraft are unloading the weapons at Saint George's main airport as we speak. They'll be put on smaller civilian aircraft and flown here. Saint George doesn't have that many aircraft, so a lot of the weapons will come by boat." Kate checked the message and her watch. "The first weapons should be here in about two hours."
Lieutenant Colonel Bohout was thrilled. The new weapons for his battalion had more than doubled the number of fully automatic weapons, mortars and recoilless rifles he had. And they had plenty of ammunition. In addition, a tall mercenary officer had accompanied the weapons with an idea.
"We've spotted a sort of a battalion here." Castle said. "I say a sort of a battalion because it only has two companies. Even better, the two companies aren't dug in together. They're a good five hundred yards apart with a lot of saw grass between them.
Saw grass was a local plant that lived up to its name. It was almost as good as barbed wire for keeping unwanted people out.
Bohout smiled and looked at the satellite imagery the colonel had brought.
"If we can take this hill, we can shoot down into the nearest company with one of my companies. My other two companies can get on either side of the enemy leaving him with the option of either attacking my people or running into the saw grass. I have some very good scouts in my battalion. I'll send them to see what's on that hill."
A platoon had been ordered to hold the hill, but the platoon leader had decided that he would be safer if he kept most of his platoon with the rest of the company and only sent a squad to hold the hill. That would be plenty of men to warn of an attack, he thought. And, since his company commander never left his command bunker, he'd never know the platoon leader had disobeyed orders.
The squad sent to the hill felt that they were too few in number to hold the hill. Of the eleven men in the squad, three never went to the hill, having found a reason to stay with the company. Once on the hill, the squad leader decided he needed to coordinate with the platoon commander and went back down the hill. That left seven men on the hill, except that when it got dark, four more men slipped down the hill, leaving just three men to hold the hill. Those three were easily knifed to death by the Berber scouts and the hill taken by one Berber company.
Very quietly the three Berber companies took position around the lone company. Once they were in position, colonel Bohout order his men to open fire. He smiled at the foreign colonel and the colonel smiled back.
Mortars, recoilless rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and assault rifles tore into the surprised enemy troops, decimating them. Most of the company panicked at once and headed for the supposed safety of the other company. Caught up in the saw grass, they were shot to bits. A few enemy soldiers put up a fight, but they were overcome by the Berbers.
When the Berbers went around the saw grass to attack the second company, they found their positions vacant. Having a good head start, the enemy company easily outran the Berbers, but left behind a treasure trove of weapons, ammunition and equipment.
The next day, Castle, Beckett and General Izem looked over satellite photos of the areas held by Mejia's men.
"There's nearly a mile long gap between the northernmost part of Majia's army and the rest of it." Kate said. "It's hard to tell with the kind of satellite photos we get, but it looks like there's maybe a full brigade in each part."
General Izem looked at the photos.
"You're correct, Captain Beckett. There does appear to be quite a gap between the two units, but I shall need to send in my scouts to make sure. As you say, the satellite photos are not conclusive."
TBC